Showing results by author "Michael Black" in All Categories

It started as a simple missing person case. Maria Castro came to private detective Ron Shade because her friend, Juanita, was desperate to find her fiancé. It all seemed pretty standard...until the missing fiancé was found floating in a canal. From there the search for something resembling the truth led Shade deeper and deeper into the darkness, in a world of murder, conspiracy, and cover-ups. But Shade won't be satisfied with the truth. He's looking for justice.

Things couldn’t be worse for Sergeant Frank Leal. He’s assigned a homicide at a seedy motel that suddenly develops into a "heater". Leal’s regular partner‚ Olivia Hart‚ is reassigned to the SWAT team. He’s also saddled with a college intern tweeting his every move‚ and Hart’s replacement is a rubber-gun-squad candidate who has conversations with a hand-puppet named Oscar. Hart’s secretly assigned to an internal affairs investigation to determine which members of the SWAT team are stealing the money during drug raids.

How much do you owe a past love? Ever wonder about it? Private Detective Ron Shade does when he bumps into his former lover, Paula Kittermann, late one lonely December night in a hotel bar. Paula had once been a major factor in Shade’s life, but that was a very long time ago. Against his better judgement, he lets her back in, but when she’s gone, without so much as a goodbye kiss, leaving him once with only bittersweet memories of what might have been. Then Paula turns up dead, the apparent victim of a hit-and-run accident. Though shocked, Shade moves on with his life until Paula’s young cousin, Laurie, shows up in Chicago, asking him to look into the matter. Shade’s investigation takes a walk on the seedy side, and begins to attract the attention of some very powerful enemies. But whenever Shade gets close to the truth, somebody seems to end up dead, and he suddenly finds himself the prime suspect in a homicide investigation. Working to clear himself and find out who killed Paula, Shade goes up against some redoubtable foes who will stop at nothing to ensure his search for the truth won’t be completed.

Something's happening in the underworld of Cook County. Tensions are rising between two rival drug lords, and the streets are their battleground. Sergeant Frank Leal and his former partner, Olivia “Ollie” Hart, get involved when one of their informants turns up dead with his ear cut off. When one drug lord decides it’s time to eliminate the competition completely, the takeover becomes very hostile indeed. As blood flows in the gutter and retaliation rules the day, Leal and Hart have to stop two criminal armies....

For the fan of good poetry interested in the diversity of American expression. The anthology provides an understanding of the history and contemporary vitality of the poetry and poetics of the non-normative body. Three sections—"Foremothers and Forefathers," "The Disability Poetics Movement," and "A Language of New Embodiment"—gather the poems and statements on poetics together in a meaningful whole.

Private eye Ron Shade and news reporter Alex St. James nearly ran into each other in the final chapters of their respective adventures, A Final Judgment and Deadly Interest. Little did they know that their chance encounter would place them on a future collision course. Now, in Dead Ringer, their first adventure together, Shade is looking for Bob Bayless, a dead-and-buried executive who was recently spotted playing blackjack in Vegas, while Alex fights off the attentions of a creepy mortician who’s a little too eager to show Alex his backroom moves.

The Red Caesar Code: A Guidebook for the Installation of the American Dictator is a timely short-form work that investigates the political and social dynamics that have led to a precipice in the political landscape of the United States, and indeed the world.